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renaerys · 4 years

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PPG One-Shot: Blowing Off Steam (Brick/Blossom)

@carriedreamerx and @kiebs have been hard at work these last couple of days drawing some really pretty art over on IG for various of our collective fics (check out their IGs, the art is super gorgeous). Since I have the artistic skills of a rock, I thought I’d say thanks with some Reds fight-and-make-out fic! This is an excerpt from an upcoming multi-chapter fic that will feature the Punks along with the Girls and the Boys. Gist of it is they’ve all been warped to a different planet and are stuck in a weird, possibly haunted house as they try to find a way out of it with punches and problem solving and *gasp* teamwork. They’re all in their late 20s in this. In this excerpt, Brick and Blossom blow off a little steam and Berserk takes all the credit.

(Unbeta’d and subject to change when I get around to posting the actual multi-chapter fic itself.)

xxx

Blossom had never felt more discomfited by Berserk’s absence than her presence, but she felt it now across the table from Brick with no one else around to draw her wandering eye, or his. He shifted his weight in his chair. She stretched her neck. He took a sip of water. She cleared her throat.

After ten minutes of this, he slammed his book shut. “What is happening?”

Blossom fixed her gaze firmly on her book and the passage she’d re-read at least four times now without absorbing any of it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s taken you twenty minutes to read two pages.”

The knee-jerk urge to refute him tugged at her like a dog begging for table scraps, but she ignored it. He wasn’t wrong. “I guess I’m finding it hard to concentrate today.”

They watched each other across the long table, and it struck her just how red his eyes were even from afar: two burning pits fixed entirely on her. Unsettling, yet strangely warm. She thought about retiring early, but she wasn’t tired. In fact, she was having some trouble sitting still in her chair. Maybe a walk outside would do her good, or even a run. Maybe Buttercup was free and up for a spar. Just anything to get her body moving and her brain blanking before her thoughts burned a hole through her skull and exposed everything to him.

“Let’s go a round,” Brick said. The sound of his chair sliding over the tile screamed in the cavernous, quiet library.

“What?”

“I feel like I’m trying to crawl out of my own skin.” He flexed a fist, and red sparks spiderwebbed along his knuckles to the wrist eager for something to burn.

Blossom’s mouth went dry at the manifest threat of his power calling to her like old ghosts. She could retreat, provide some excuse, it had worked before. But no excuse came to her now, and under the table, her fingers curled around a mass of pastel power itching for a summoning. She rose from her chair, books forgotten, and headed for the door. “We can’t have that,” she said.

He fell into step after her not a moment later and followed her down the hall and up the second floor balcony to the first challenge room. The house was quiet and empty tonight, its vaulted ceilings cold and distant. It was as though they were the only two people awake in this uncanny place.

It took everything Blossom had not to stop and wait for him to catch up. His eyes at her back gave off a singular heat, homing and hyper-focused. Perhaps years ago, she would have never entertained the thought of turning her back on someone so dangerous. Now, the thought of what she might invite if she faced him kept her squarely focused on her destination ahead.

“Ladies first,” Brick said directly behind her when they reached the challenge room. He grabbed the edge of the door and held it open for her.

Blossom looked anywhere but back at him and stepped over the threshold. The change of pressure entering the pocket dimension made her ears pop and the access band on her wrist heat with power. As before, the walls on all sides moved as concrete structures grew and shifted, sky scrapers blooming like flowers and withering to dust, only to sprout again elsewhere. Brick followed and closed the door behind them. Already disoriented, Blossom began to float as she adjusted to the altered gravity and tried to abandon the idea of up versus down.

“Restrictions?” Brick asked. He shed his red jacket, leaving him only in his matching pants and a form-fitting tank top.

Blossom very maturely averted her gaze lest he assume she was ogling him, of all the ludicrous notions. Steeling herself, she unzipped her own red jacket and tossed it aside to join his. “Since when can you afford to restrain yourself against me?”

His laughter, light and low, shivered her to the bone. “All right, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He was on her in a flash with a hard punch. Blossom blocked at the last second, but the force sent her crashing into concrete. She barely had time to cough when he came at her again with another punch aimed at her face, but this time she dodged in the nick of time and it was his turn to eat rubble.

Adrenaline and Chemical X made for a heady, explosive cocktail in her veins that spread from her fingertips to the very ends of her long ponytail. Incandescent, pink power jumped over her bare arms as she poised to receive him again.

“Come on,” she said.

Brick glowed red, and it was her only warning before he rocketed after her. Blossom took off deeper into the maze of ever changing obstacles, the exertion only fueling her faster along in a familiar chase they had not run in years.

The pocket dimension was a death trap. Blossom darted over and under spikes and spires closing around her like jaws, her movements precise and fluid. But Brick was just as adept and wasted little energy swerving around the masticating mandible they had chosen for this evening’s playground.

Blossom swung around and under a sprouting obelisk, trusting her body to move exactly according to her will, but Brick abruptly changed course and met her mid-spin. Anticipating his sneak attack, Blossom let him have it with a wicked kick in the ribs.

Unfortunately, he was damn fast and grabbed her by the ankle just as her kick connected, and they both went flying with the force of her attack. A receding column broke Blossom’s fall with a rude crunch, and she broke Brick’s. Rose met red through a cloud of dust and electric Chemical X.

“Caught you,” he said.

Maybe it was the rush of the moment that drove her, the old thrill of the hunt from their heyday, never acknowledged but deeply felt. She felt him now, palms searing around her knee and pinning her neck, and she reached back.

Too close to avoid her open palm on his chest, Brick took her ice at point-blank range and blasted away in a flurry of snowflakes. He nearly hit a stone pillar punching out of the undulating wall, but managed to flip out of its path at the last second.

Blossom floated higher, her arms sleeved in ice and her breath misty. The temperature plummeted further as her power rippled through the pocket dimension. “Not quite,” she said in a voice that crept in between the shifting sky scrapers like hoarfrost.

Across from her, Brick’s power sluiced off him as thick as magma. He was a bright, burning star in this grey world, and god she could feel him pushing back and fighting for ground as if he were right in front of her. The chemically saturated air shimmered around him and ignited the blood in his eyes as they met hers. “Come here.”

It was all the encouragement she needed to give in to the timeless spark between them and unleash. Frost met fire as they collided, broke, and collided again. His punches smoldered, but her ice tempered them to cleansing smoke. And when she caught him in a freezing hold, he inevitably slipped through behind a veil of steam. Each unable to smother the other, they were evenly matched and forever at odds as they ricocheted off stone towers and toppled thrusting obelisks in their bid for dominance.

And that was what this was, what it had always been. Blossom had never felt the need to control and dominate another like she felt it fighting Brick. Call it fate, or design, or maybe it was just him, but there was nothing like this release, this honest surrender to the creature she was and always would be, made magnificent in the eyes of a true equal.

“I’m right here!” she taunted, with snowflakes in her hair.

Brick landed on a cracked block. The cement began to melt under the heat of his power where he crouched and captured her in those pyre-bright eyes. “Is that an invitation?” he shot back. “Or a threat?”

Alive with the thrill of unfettered competition, Blossom grinned. “Let’s find out.”

She took off at a punishing pace, half flying around the cement blocks and half skating over their frozen faces. Brick was right on her tail, his steps scorching the swaths of ice she left in her wake to cataclysmic ends. Wherever the two Supers’ extremities came into direct contact, the concrete collapsed and exploded like a parade of supernovas.

He was close, she could feel it, but he wouldn’t catch her, no way. Blossom was the best at what she did, and no one knew that better than her counterpart. But he was fast closing the distance between them, and when she chanced a glance back, there he was haloed in haze, his fire rising like great, golden chains, and he reached for her.

Blossom gasped, and it was her mistake. Brick caught her waist and pulled her back hard. The blizzard in her lungs went up in steam between his fingers clamped over her mouth. They hurtled together head over heels with Blossom kicking and jabbing with her elbows. But Brick locked her arms to her sides and anchored her to his chest until they came to a stop and she could hardly move. Pink power crackled on her skin as she thrashed in his arms, but he only laughed.

“That tickles,” he murmured.

Blossom immediately ceased her struggling. Immured in his arms with no chance of escaping unless he let her go, she became acutely aware of just how close they were. His breath was warm in her hair, and he smelled like smoke and parchment. He hadn’t loosened his hold around her at all.

“Brick,” she said, sotto voce.

He laughed again, low and husky. “Yield.”

The very word inspired an electric disdain in her. “No.”

He pressed his nose to her hair, and when he spoke his lips brushed against the side of her neck. “Are you sure?”

Blossom turned her head to look him in the eye and held on to her nerve out of sheer force of will. “Are you?”

This close, she could count his freckles and taste the heat he radiated, but there was no reading him beyond his singular and absolute focus on her.

He loosened his grip around her and pulled away. “No,” he said.

Blossom caught him before he could move away. Thoughtless perhaps, but Blossom never stopped thinking, not about their entrapment here, not about finding a way out, and not about him since the day they arrived in this strange place. She barely tugged at his shirt before he was on her again, arms around her waist and kissing her hard. Her fingers sparked with power as she threaded them through his short hair, making him groan, and he suddenly shoved them against the freezing, concrete wall until it cracked. His kiss was volcanic, as relentless as he was, and Blossom pulled him deeper with a smile.

The wall lurched at her back, and as quickly as it had begun, Brick ended the kiss and pushed her out of the way of a wicked spike just as it erupted from the enchanted wall. Blossom landed deftly on a nearby block and watched him do the same. Breathing hard, she wiped the traces of the best kiss of her life from her lips.

“Best two out of three,” he called to her.

Unable to resist, she smirked. “Restrictions?”

“You couldn’t restrain yourself against me if you tried.”

A retort sat poised on the tip of her tongue, but it still remembered his kiss and refused to cooperate.

“Blossom,” he said in a commanding tone that wanted answering.

Blossom’s power burst around her, radioactive, and she launched herself skyward. “Try and keep up.”

They spent the next two hours raining tempestuous ruin, on the pocket dimension and on each other.

xxx

Berserk took one look at Brick and Blossom when they returned to the Red Wing later that evening in their soot- and sleet-stained clothes, set her book down, and drained the rest of her bourbon. “Oh god.”

Brick rolled his eyes headed for his room. “There better be some of that left when I get out of the shower.”

Berserk flipped him the bird, which he returned behind his back before slamming the door.

Blossom hovered like a deer caught in the headlights until Berserk took pity on her and poured a fresh glass. “Here. You look like you need this more than I do.”

Blossom snapped out of it and took the offered bourbon automatically. “What?”

Jesus Christ.

You try to be nice for once, and nobody fucking appreciates it. Typical.

“Whatever.” Berserk went back to her book and her own glass of bourbon, which she topped off with the rest of the bottle so there would be none left for Brick.

Blossom didn’t fuck off to her own room like she ought to have, but instead sat down on the red sofa across from Berserk. She was smiling like a creep. Before Berserk could ask her if she needed medical assistance with whatever the hell was going on, Blossom said, “Cheers.”

Magenta eyes narrowed over the top of her book as Berserk studied her counterpart for any hint of a scheme. When she found none, she cautiously clinked her overfull glass to Blossom’s and drank.

They sat there in silence for a while. The sound of Brick’s shower was a low din behind his closed door as Berserk slowly flipped the pages of her book, some boring shit about this planet’s agricultural practices. Blossom had picked up a book of her own and curled up, her legs tucked under her in a perfect mirror to Berserk. Every once in a while Berserk would steal a glance at her counterpart and find her quiet and content with her book and bourbon. Peaceful was not quite the right word for this weirdly tranquil ambience, and Blossom for sure needed a shower. But, well…

Well.

“Thank you.”

It was so softly spoken, that had they not been reading in complete silence, Berserk may not have heard her speak. Blossom didn’t look up to acknowledge her sitting there, or even to check that Berserk had heard her.

Berserk curled a lock of her frizzy, red hair around her finger and buried her nose in her book. “Whatever.”

Blossom hid a smile behind her book and finished her drink.

xxx

Thanks for reading! <3

#Blossick #Reds #Blossom #Brick #Berserk #Powerpuff Girls #PPG #fanfic #carriedreamerx #kiebs #February Fic Prompts #i'm liking this world and pretty excited about writing the ppnkgs!#and more reds who am i kidding #PPG Trinity House

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